epoch;474188]Dear Angela,
I tend to like you, but you make a number of mistakes here.
Well, I sort of like you too, so I'm glad you've clarified some of your statements.
OK, lets wait and see if the Germans during Mardi Grass in Cologne be just as bad. We'll know next month. O, and having your shoes puked upon is a completely different thing than being spat at because you are considered a filthy whore. However gross the vomiting is.
Well, maybe I shouldn't have brought up the vomiting on my shoes.

I guess that years later I'm still pissed; it's the first thing I remember about Mardi Gras and New Orleans. I was only there because there was a massive snow storm in the northeast and my plane had to land there. It was my first and last trip btw; even the food and the music aren't enough to redeem it in my opinon. My point is that the groping, thefts, and rapes that happen there more frequently during Mardi Gras occur because the local government tolerates and even markets the fact that people will be able to drink on the street, that public displays of drunkenness will not be prosecuted, and that lewd behavior will not be punished. Inevitably, some people will take it further. (The city government tolerates this behavior because the thousands and thousands of tourists bring a lot of money there.)
I totally get it that this isn't what normally happens at these festivals in Europe, or at least not the groping part? I've been to the Taranta festivals in southern Italy numerous times, when tens of thousands of people clogs the piazze, and I've never seen such a thing. I never even see public drunkenness. In some cases, these recent incidents may indeed have been for the purpose of distraction and theft. In Rome, I've seen bands of gypsy kids surround people for the same purpose. Others may have been the result of young men with access to mass amounts of alcohol for the first time who come from a totally different culture, with different, and to me, abhorrent customs.
A pronounced police presence, mass round-ups and stiff penalties are the answer, as I've already said. It's the broken window approach I've already described. Punish the lesser offenses, and the message goes out and all crime rates go down.
I also totally get that many Europeans don't want to have to deal with the problems caused by a mass migration of young men with these kinds of attitudes. I don't want it for Italy either.
However, from the way some of you were talking I was imagining dozens of rapes in each town, women having their clothes ripped off and groped by a circle of men and other horrendous scenarios, not someone deliberately spitting water at a woman (if you're even sure that in that particular situation that's actually what happened and what was said). Surely you understand the difference?
You do realize that my last reactions were about the current sentiment, not about my opinion?
I'm glad to hear it.
I simply commented on the statement by LeBrok that he was convinced that part of the complaints were due to neo-nazi sympathies. Some postings here point to the rising number of complaints, but the overall picture that emerged was due to eye witnesses that appeared on serious main stream media, social media and personal accounts. From all sides the same picture emerged. The complaints were filed only a long time later, after the picture emerged and it became clear that the authorities had failed and tried to cover up the fact that a lot, if not all, of these were attacks were done by recent asylum seekers.
A cover up is one thing. However, I sat through weeks of interviews on CNN, NBC, CBS etc. where witness after witness claimed they saw the young black man put up his hands and say, "Stop, don't shoot!", before being gunned down. You have no idea of the unreliability of so-called reliable eye-witness accounts. Even when interviewed just an hour after an incident, you'll get numerous often conflicting versions. Sometimes people are lying, most of the time they are "conforming" their narrative to what they've heard or is acceptable or will get them attention. Don't misunderstand me; I don't doubt a lot of bad stuff happened.
As I said before, originally this was kept rather silent by the police, who claimed it was a very nice and cosy new years eve in a press release. Unless you think all the reports that surfaces afterwards were exaggerations, I see only one agenda at work here. The "Don't give oxygen to the right wing" agenda.
OK. We have so far: Swedish police claiming that festivals went in great harmony which had a similar sexual harrassment and admitting they did so because they didn't want to foment right wing sentiments (Linked somewhere above). We have the Rotherham cases where the police didn't want to act on cases of white girls being groomed by Asian (Read: Pakistani) gangs out of fear for being called racist and
did not want to have it in the news in order not to give oxygen to racism. We have reports of German police admitting to never ever give press releases about severe crimes where asylum seekers are involved. We have the cover up on Cologne, Bielefeld. But we are to think this is... not inflaming the situation? Good grief.
So you and others have pointed out numerous times. Has anyone responded that this is a good thing? What do you want us to do, put a sticky at the top of the thread saying we think it's terrible that they covered it up? OK, imagine it's been done.
What exactly should Europe have done in the Middle-East? The military option, as was done in Iraq and Libya? If not, then what exactly?
I don't want to de-rail this thread, Epoch, but yes, if necessary, a military option. Whatever the wisdom of going into Iraq originally on bad intelligence, the surge worked, and troops shouldn't have been withdrawn. For God's sake, we've had tens of thousands of troops between North and South Korea since 1951.What do you think would have happened to South Korea or even perhaps Japan without them. What happened in this case is that in addition to other more complicated reasons, this administration didn't want to carry the water for Europe anymore, and it's bitten you you know where. We have oceans protecting us to some extent from the chaos of the modern Middle East; you don't. You'd better cut back a little on all your social services and spend some money on defense and police too. I'm usually an admirer of the French police and security services (they're tough as nails), but they fell down on the job, pure and simple. Oh, and get rid of some of the tribalism and try to act as an actually united Europe for once;divided, you're all going to fall.
I will pass the opportunity to ask you if this is part of the hysteria you mentioned. Nobody would vote Hitler today because the main attraction and the main characteristic of fascism was anti-pacifism and anti-democracy. You should, would you ever find the time, read Ortega Y Gassets book "
The Revolt of the Masses". It describes the sentiment of the time nicely, apart from being an amazingly smart book.
My dear Epoch, whatever the genesis of fascism, Nazism added a large racist component. I recommend Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich". Written by someone who actually covered all those years as observer and journalist, and indeed interviewed many of many characters, it's still one of the best treatments of the subject, and I'm not the only one who thinks so. The early chapters where he discusses the values and attitudes and belief sets of northern, central and eastern Europe from the late 19th century are particularly informative.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/histo...-and-fall-of-the-third-reich-20231221/?no-ist